📊 July was another turbulent month for audience at the 50 biggest news publishers in the UK, of which 37 saw a drop year on year.

The good news is that fewer publishers (27, so still more than half) saw users spending less time with their content compared to July last year.

The best case scenario at this point is that even as audience declines for most publishers due to Google AI Overviews and other user behaviour changes, those that do come to the newsbrands choose to spend more time there.

Those leading the way on this engagement focus, with double-digit minutes growth both month on month and year on year in July, were: The i Paper, ITV, Good Housekeeping, the Oxford Mail and the Daily Express.

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🗞️ In print, our latest exclusive figures from the US show just one of the 50 largest audited newspapers in the country grew average daily circulation in the six months to March.

Two out of three of the biggest declines were at titles owned by rich men whose strategies have come in for some criticism.

Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, which cut a third of its staff in February, saw the third biggest year-on-year decline down by almost a quarter.

The biggest drop was at The Baltimore Sun, where a journalist of 25 years recently resigned saying the newspaper has “changed” since its purchase by Sinclair Broadcast Group executive chairman David Smith.

There is a simple reason for the one growing print newspaper: The print-first Villages Daily Sun covers a retirement community area of Florida. But it is owned by the property development company, meaning it is not wholly independent.

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🐝 Back on home soil, Reach is using its USP (having national brands and regionals all over the UK) to create a Northern base for Mirror journalists at the Manchester Evening News office.

Mirror North, echoing Andy Burnham’s No 10 North, is a refreshing motion towards getting out of the London bubble.

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From our sponsor

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The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

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Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

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(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

Tony Allcock, one of the longest-serving editors in the history of the Islington Gazette, has died at the age of 78. (Press Gazette)

The jobs of all BBC news presenters in Scotland have reportedly been put at risk with a total of 60 jobs expected to go. (Daily Mail)

Puck is in advanced talks to sell a significant stake to US private equity group RedBird Capital in a deal that would value it at about $250m (£184m). (Financial Times)

BBC‘s director general Matt Brittin has said BBC iPlayer could benefit from a “public service algorithm” that allows it to function more like Youtube and opens up to creators. (Deadline)

Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger have said on the latest episode of Media Confidential that although it was their last at Prospect, they are "exploring options" and in "active discussions" over what to do next with the show. (Apple Podcasts)

Axel Springer has invested in Abu Dhabi-based business and tech publication The Circuit. (Semafor)

Time has said it is making a "significant investment" in its AI and technology coverage with two new staff roles, a relaunched AI newsletter and the first Time 100 AI Leadership Forum in Washington DC. (Time)

Reports have suggested the US could target Canada’s Online News Act, which forces tech giants to pay for news, amid trade negotiations between the two countries. (Reporters Without Borders)

The New York Post has signed a first-look creative partnership with Crazy Legs Productions to adapt true crime, pop culture and sports stories and archival materials into scripted and unscripted film, TV, documentary and streaming projects. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Strong Words, the book magazine launched in 2019 by magazine veteran Ed Needham, has closed. He said: “I may have been slightly off in my bet that magazines were due to rise again, but I know it brought a lot of people a lot of pleasure.”

President Donald Trump attacked The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, calling her “unattractive” and a “stalker”, following a report that he planned to skip the 25th anniversary 9/11 commemoration in New York. (The Independent)

Scottish publisher Hero Media & Entertainment, which owns titles like Scottish Legal News, Scottish Construction Now and Scottish Housing News, has appointed ex-editor of The Herald and Sunday Post Donald Martin as consulting managing editor providing guidance across the portfolio.

Newsquest’s The Impartial Reporter has appointed news editor Victoria Johnston as editor, succeeding Rodney Edwards. She said there will be a “series of small changes” coming up to enhance the experience of readers and clients. (The Impartial Reporter)

👀In case you missed it:

1) LLM citation mastery: Tips from Axios publisher Nicholas Johnston

Axios signed a three-year content licensing deal with OpenAI last year.

2) Texas non-profit newsrooms ‘stronger together’ after merger

Texas Public Radio and San Antonio Report run separate newsrooms but have combined operations.

3) MSN removes publishers from platform without notice

Fears news syndication platform is consolidating its publisher base.

4) ‘Misleading’ Home Office photo guidance risks ‘serious consequences’ for journalists, warns NUJ

Booklet ‘spreads public confusion’ about journalists’ rights, says union.

5) What I’ve learned: Future operations director Catherine Westwood who led major digital transformation

Head of Future’s global print editorial strategy now focused on staff upskilling around cross-platform workflows.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

📋 The Axios ‘Smart Brevity’ format appears to be one as beloved by humans and robots alike for making content easy to digest.

Alice Brooker spoke to Axios publisher Nicholas Johnston for the latest in our Masterclass series, sharing tips about how the newsbrand is maximising LLM visibility and monetisation.

It is partway through a three-year deal with OpenAI that is also directly supporting the expansion of Axios Local.

Axios was one of the publishers represented in discussions about new LLM revenue lines on our News Yacht in Cannes in June, discussing the fact that they are able to speak to potential partners about making the most of their AI visibility.

READ FULL STORY

🤠 I spoke to the bosses of two Texas non-profit newsrooms that have merged under a charitable contribution of assets after they decided they would be “stronger together”.

Texas Public Radio and San Antonio Report are now a combined $10m revenue business and they believe they have much more growth potential as a bigger operation.

The proof already appears to be in the pudding as they have raised $2.8m for the expansion of the newsroom since the merger talks began.

READ FULL STORY

👩‍⚖️ Despite slow progress in the courts in the fight between news publishers and AI companies, more are still joining the fray.

Editorial Perfil has become the first Spanish-language publisher to sue OpenAI and Microsoft and, notably, it has filed its lawsuit in its home country of Argentina rather than the US - meaning it is not reliant on the same legal precedents as The New York Times and others.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

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The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

Former BBC News CEO and NBC News president Deborah Turness has revealed her next job will be president of Independent Talent Studio, building brands, franchises and IP around talent. (Deadline)

Former Sun editor and News UK COO David Dinsmore, who had joined Keir Starmer's team to overhaul Government communications, has left after agreeing that "this is an appropriate point to hand over leadership of the programme" under Andy Burnham. (Politico)

Reports online have suggested that Google‘s latest spam update was aimed at removing AI-generated SEO content from search rankings. (Search Engine Journal)

Axel Springer is expanding into the Middle East, having named its Bild Group COO Frank Mahlberg as managing director based in Abu Dhabi from October. (The National)

Bloomberg has launched a new digital hub for India, curated by a dedicated team, to give Indian investors "a comprehensive view of global capitalism". (Bloomberg)

Link carousels for "developing topics" are now appearing in Google's AI Mode. They had already begun to appear in AI Overviews at the top of search results. (Search Engine Roundtable)

Reach is hiring a new team including a head of brand marketing, two customer mid-weight designers and brand managers to work closely with editors and support its "big plans" for some of its biggest brands in 2027. (David Higgerson on Linkedin)

Outgoing presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today programme Amol Rajan has warned that the BBC is destined to “get smaller at an accelerating rate”. (The Guardian)

👀In case you missed it:

1) MSN removes publishers from platform without notice

Fears news syndication platform is consolidating its publisher base.

2) ‘Misleading’ Home Office photo guidance risks ‘serious consequences’ for journalists, warns NUJ

Booklet ‘spreads public confusion’ about journalists’ rights, says union.

3) What I’ve learned: Future operations director Catherine Westwood who led major digital transformation

Head of Future’s global print editorial strategy now focused on staff upskilling around cross-platform workflows.

4) Revealed: The news publishers on Instagram with the biggest follower growth since 2024

Press Gazette analysis reveals which outlets currently have the biggest presence on Instagram.

5) Social media content creation mastery: Tips for publishers from DMG New Media

Social publisher DMG New Media has 25 in-house creators.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

⚠️ Today we have a warning about being too reliant on one platform as several independent publishers have reported being abruptly removed from MSN.

It follows a similar lesson last week as Pink News is making cuts due to changes to how Snapchat distributes and monetises publisher content.

Gone are the days of being a Google-reliant publisher, or an MSN one, or a Facebook success story.

Hello! is my favourite recent example of this, pivoting from a reliance on Google (particularly Google Discover) towards MSN, but also a raft of other syndication partners as well as a paid community.

READ FULL STORY

🖥️ Our latest What I’ve Learned interviewee is Future operations director Catherine Westwood, who shares some valuable leadership lessons learned through various phases of digital transformation.

Last week our featured interviewee’s inspiration was Margaret Thatcher. Now we’ve gone back even further in time to a Roman emperor.

Westwood’s current work is focused around upskilling editorial operations staff to master cross-platform workflows, going beyond traditional print/digital production.

READ FULL STORY

📖 And finally, a Home Office booklet with guidance on life in the UK for asylum seekers widely made headlines last week.

But one concerning area for journalists has now been spotted: readers are told “do not photograph or film people in public” and this is quickly conflated with the illegal sharing of sexual pictures.

Concerns have been raised that this will put journalists in danger from people who, as a result, mistakenly believe people taking photos in public are breaking the law even if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

Huffpost's national desk has reportedly reduced from seven to three reporters as a result of recently announced Buzzfeed cuts. Just over a year ago it had 14 reporters in total. (The Wrap)

USA Today Co is testing ways to reformat its website content for an AI bot audience to attract content licensing deals and improve the discoverability of its content in answer engines. (Digiday)

The National Union of Journalists has condemned the US government’s decision to shorten visas for foreign journalists and said it supports joint union legal action to block it. (NUJ)

Metro has apologised for having "wrongly stated that JK Rowling had been 'engaged in Holocaust denial'" in a story about the new Harry Potter TV series and removed the allegation. (Metro)

Billionaire hedge fund chief Stanley Druckenmiller has said he is "not embarassed" to have used AI to write a Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking the White House. WSJ's opinion editor has defended him, saying "AI is a fact of modern life". (The Telegraph)

A jury has sided with a Louisiana supreme court justice, awarding him $300,000 in damages, after determining that local newspaper The Advocate and two former editors defamed him in a 2019 editorial. (The Hill)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Revealed: The news publishers on Instagram with the biggest follower growth since 2024

Press Gazette analysis reveals which outlets currently have the biggest presence on Instagram.

2) Social media content creation mastery: Tips for publishers from DMG New Media

Social publisher DMG New Media has 25 in-house creators.

3) Axel Springer gave Telegraph £7m loan months before takeover

Telegraph group revenue was down 2% in 2025 despite gains in digital subscriptions and advertising.

4) Traffic to 10 biggest US news websites down a third in two years

How overall and search traffic has declined at major news websites, largely since 2024 peak.

5) Second ‘overwhelming victory’ for Mail publisher in Harry privacy case with costs decision

Associated Newspapers awarded costs on indemnity basis, initial payment, and no cap.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

📱 Last week we revealed the news publishers with the biggest growth on Tiktok since 2024, and now we’ve done the same for Instagram – a platform growing at a slower rate but used by more people globally.

Our analysis shows five of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US had more than ten million followers in August 2026.

Interestingly, the three news publishers seeing the biggest percentage growth on Instagram are right-leaning and more opinion-led in terms of the type of content they produce.

BBC News remains the biggest newsbrand on Instagram in terms of follower count, tipping over the 30 million threshold in the two years since our last ranking. Just one publisher in the round-up has lost followers since August 2024.

Instagram owner Meta (which also owns Facebook, Threads and WhatsApp), was declared the biggest website publisher in the UK for 2025, with users spending 122 billion minutes with it in April 2026.

Read our full analysis to discover how news publishers are performing on Instagram.

READ FULL STORY

📽️ And on the topic of social content, the social publishing arm of the Daily Mail and the Metro, DMG New Media, has shared tips on how to build an audience and revenue on platforms like Instagram and Tiktok.

In October last year we spoke to DMG New Media about how the team was “doubling down” on reaching young people and trying to gain more from advertising opportunities.

In our latest masterclass we spoke to social media expert and commercial managing director at DMG New Media Hannah Blake about how exactly publishers can best monetise content on the platform.

She shared tips on why publishers should invest in creator-led content and what type of content does best, as well as how to go about hiring a team for the venture.

With more than 150 million followers across its social channels, DMG New Media operates with a team of 25 in-house creators and just seven on its direct sales team.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire and compensate an opinion columnist who was fired over her social media posts about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. (New York Post)

The BBC is seeking to dismiss Donald Trump's $10bn lawsuit again, claiming Trump can't sue it for defamation in a Florida court over a documentary that was produced in London and didn’t air in the US. (Deadline)

The BBC has published its Youtube commissioning brief in a step towards original content made specifically for the platform. The broadcaster is looking for ideas conceived for Youtube, with a strong sense of the 16–24 year-old audience they’re aimed at. (BBC)

California’s attorney general has axed scheduled talks with representatives of Paramount over the company’s planned $111bn takeover of CNN parent Warner Bros Discovery. (Advanced Television)

The Economist has launched a personalised newsletter called The Economist for You, which compiles a reading list using the publisher's in-house AI tool. Head of newsletters Aaron Coulate said the "experiment" is "different from any other editorial newsletter in our portfolio". (The Economist)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Axel Springer gave Telegraph £7m loan months before takeover

Telegraph group revenue was down 2% in 2025 despite gains in digital subscriptions and advertising.

2) Traffic to 10 biggest US news websites down a third in two years

How overall and search traffic has declined at major news websites, largely since 2024 peak.

3) Second ‘overwhelming victory’ for Mail publisher in Harry privacy case with costs decision

Associated Newspapers awarded costs on indemnity basis, initial payment, and no cap.

4) Pink News to cut up to 11 staff and shut office amid Snapchat changes

The second round of cuts this year comes as changes to Snapchat look set to hit revenue.

5) Reach hits 50,000 paid subscribers in under nine months

First Reach subscription was Manchester Evening News launched in November 2025.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🤝 It’s no wonder that Axel Springer and The Telegraph buddied up in March when the former bought Telegraph Media Group Holdings for £575m – it’s now emerged that Axel Springer handed the company a £7m loan in early 2026, months before agreeing to take it over.

The Telegraph was bought as it swung into negative cash flow, its latest accounts reveal, with revenue was down 2% to £273m in the year to 28 December per its latest accounts. Declines were happening across print circulation and advertising, but print still made up 53% of revenue.

It’s the second time Axel Springer has gone to buy the paper – the first time was in 2004 when the Barclay family outbid it. Its successful bid this time around could lead to a sunnier financial future for the paper.

READ FULL STORY

📉 Our monthly traffic ranking for the 50 biggest news websites in the US is a really useful tool for tracking short-term changes, but it’s harder to see longer-term trends.

UK editor Charlotte Tobitt has dug into Similarweb data over three years to find out how the picture has really changed for the household names of news.

Combined traffic to the ten biggest news websites is down by almost a fifth compared to three years ago and a third compared to 2024, when a lot of sites peaked. That’s matched across a wider sample of sites, with the top 50 together down 37% compared to 2024.

Read on for Charlotte’s full data bonanza, and if you spot an angle on the traffic that you’d like to see send an email to charlotte.tobitt@pressgazette.co.uk.

READ FULL STORY

💸 And Associated Newspapers marked its second “overwhelming victory” on Friday after a High Court judge ruled that Prince Harry and other unsuccessful claimants must pay a higher than usual proportion of the publisher’s costs.

The publisher of the Daily Mail spent far more than it expected fighting the case – £18.6m more than was agreed as a reasonable budget by the court – racking up a total £34.5m in costs.

The court dismissed all 97 allegations against the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

In his judgment on how costs should be assessed, Mr Justice Nicklin said that the way legal teams for Prince Harry and the other claimants ran the case was “unreasonable to a high degree”, and that “allegations of the utmost seriousness were advanced before the evidential foundation for many of them had been established”.

Claimants have been ordered to make an interim payment of £9.5m by 28 August.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

The Guardian has condemned online abuse and harassment of its journalists, "much of it with a racialised element", after the death of Cambridge academic Jason Arday. (Press Gazette)

IPSO has dismissed a complaint from Housing Secretary Angela Rayner that alleged breach of privacy and harassment against The Sun on Sunday. (Press Gazette)

Vox has made layoffs to its editorial team just over a month after its takeover by James Murdoch's Lupa Systems completed. (Press Gazette)

Axel Springer has hired ex-Sunday Times Insight editor Jonathan Calvert as its new global reporter to work on investigations and major reporting projects starting 1 October.

Reach is hiring four new business editors in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, as well as relaunching its dedicated business sections on sites including Wales Online, the Daily Record and Manchester Evening News. (Linkedin)

The New York Times has lost a defamation case for the first time in the US for more than 50 years. A jury in Alabama awarded $9.25m in damages to a basketball player incorrectly placed at the scene of a deadly shooting. The title called it "an honest mistake". (NYT)

The Daily Mail has been accused of following and photographing a woman wrongly identified as White Stripes drummer Meg White and then deleting an article that pictured her without comment. (The Guardian)

Google is releasing a “Preferred Sources” button that publishers can embed on their pages so users can add them with one click. Users will also be able to personalise their Discover feed and their daily audio briefings in the Google News app. (News from Google)

The NYT has begun testing its first generative AI tool for readers designed to "create a better search experience". The new search page responds to queries with excerpts and links to NYT stories and AI-generated summaries. (Semafor)

Goalhanger has hired Tom Miceli in the new role of head of IP development to expand its film and TV business. Miceli previously worked at WME where he led the partnership with Goalhanger to bring The Rest is Football to Netflix. (Variety)

Yorkshire Post staff have returned to a city centre office in Leeds for the first time in three years. (Hold the Front Page)

The Pentagon has moved to fire the editor-in-chief, publisher and a Middle East reporter of Stars and Stripes, the US military news outlet which is part-funded by the US Department of Defense but retains editorial independence. The title has previously clashed with the Trump administration over its reporting. (Stars and Stripes)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Pink News to cut up to 11 staff and shut office amid Snapchat changes

The second round of cuts this year comes as changes to Snapchat look set to hit revenue.

2) Reach hits 50,000 paid subscribers in under nine months

First Reach subscription was Manchester Evening News launched in November 2025.

3) Guardian journalist David Conn, Andy Burnham and the ‘Hillsborough law’

An investigation marking 20 years since Hillsborough gave campaign fresh impetus.

4) Spectator’s sister art title Apollo adds digitised archive as ‘niche’ content serves it well against Google AI

Apollo digital upgrades come in two years after takeover by Paul Marshall’s OQS Media.

5) The news publishers on Tiktok with biggest growth since 2024

Press Gazette analysis reveals which outlets currently have the biggest presence on the platform.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🏳️‍🌈 Earlier this year Pink News told staff it was moving away from a “reporter-led” newsroom but continued to publish news, pop culture and entertainment content.

It has now dealt a further blow to staff as changes to how publisher content is displayed at Snapchat expected to deal a huge blow to revenue. Up to 11 jobs look set to be cut, with a voluntary redundancy round open at first.

It’s another reminder that relying too much on one platform is a risky place to be in today’s media ecosystem.

READ FULL STORY

📊Reach is two-thirds of the way towards meeting its target of having 75,000 paying digital subscribers by the end of the year.

Considering premium paywalls had only recently gone live on two Reach sites at the end of 2025, it’s been a significant ramp up to reach 19 brands now.

It’s a necessary step in the end of Reach’s volume and clicks era towards original journalism and better relationships with its audience. Making something worth paying for is the best test of that relationship.

READ FULL STORY

It’s been saddening to see the attacks on the media, and individual journalists, this week in the wake of Cambridge academic Jason Arday’s death.

As The Guardian’s NUJ chapel said last night, there are “genuine concerns” to be raised about how a story like Arday’s is covered. But that is no excuse for journalists to be targeted in a witch hunt themselves or sent abuse, including racist abuse, and threats.

Seeing lists of named journalists circulating on social media feels like it has gone far beyond anything I have seen before.

I am interested in how newsroom leaders and journalists are feeling this week and how you think the media should best respond to what’s being said. Please drop me a message on charlotte.tobitt@pressgazette.co.uk if you feel able to share some thoughts, even if it’s anonymous.

I will leave you with one example of public interest journalism gone right. We spoke to The Guardian’s David Conn about how his work helped lead to the ‘Hillsborough Law’ currently going through Parliament.

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

Australia's News Bargaining Incentive forcing tech giants to strike deals with news organisations or pay a levy has passed into law. News Corp Australasia executive chair Michael Miller said newsbrands "now get the much-needed investment to continue delivering professional journalism".

OpenAI is expanding its ChatGPT advertising pilot to 31 European markets from the original roster of nine countries including the US and UK. It said it has one billion weekly active users and 20% show commercial intent. (Adweek)

A new report on how publishers are using robots.txt found that 33 out of 70 block the Google-Extended crawler, which the tech giant says covers AI training but does not affect ranking in search, but all 70 are open to Googlebot at least partially. (FT Strategies)

MS Now will launch a $7.99-a-month membership ($79.99 per year) next month aimed at its "superfans" and to grow its digital business. Perks include members-only content, access to network personalities, community features and a 24/7 network feed. (Semafor)

The Federation of Independent Retailers has "strongly condemned" The Observer's plan to cut the percentage margin paid to retailers when it increases its cover price by 50p to £5 from 13 September. (The Fed)

Axios is expanding its local coverage in Arizona with the launch of Axios Mesa and Axios Scottsdale, its 42nd and 43rd local markets. It said the expansion is "made possible" by its partnership with OpenAI. (Axios)

Print and digital publisher Queen City Nerve, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is shutting down after eight years. The title claims to be Charlotte's only alternative news outlet. (Queen City Nerve)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Spectator’s sister art title Apollo adds digitised archive as ‘niche’ content serves it well against Google AI

Apollo digital upgrades come in two years after takeover by Paul Marshall’s OQS Media.

2) The news publishers on Tiktok with biggest growth since 2024

Press Gazette analysis reveals which outlets currently have the biggest presence on the platform.

3) What I’ve learned: Metropolis CEO Robert Marr who went ‘from finance bro to media guy’

CEO of owner of 43 B2B newsbrands on why you ‘can’t be the oracle’ as a business leader.

4) IPSO reviewing ‘high volume’ of Jason Arday coverage complaints after Cambridge academic’s death

Complaints filed en masse in relation to Clause 1 (accuracy) of Editors’ Code.

5) Subscriber retention mastery: Tips for publishers from The Economist

The Economist has a 93% subscription retention rate on its B2B offering.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🧑‍🎨 September will mark two years since Sir Paul Marshall bought The Spectator and saved it from the even more drawn-out sale process that The Telegraph went through until earlier this summer.

But going slightly under the radar in The Spectator deal was monthly art magazine Apollo (often given one mention and no further reference in the coverage, including at Press Gazette).

I have now hopefully made up for that omission by speaking to Apollo editor Edward Behrens about the state of play at the profitable title.

Apollo has just launched a premium subscription tier based around its newly-digitised magazine archive.

Behrens also spoke about how Apollo has proved slightly protected from the Google AI changes due to its niche position. If the stuff it covers isn’t included in AI model training data, people still need to go to them directly.

READ FULL STORY

🎬 Earlier this year we reported that Tiktok’s owner Bytedance was the fastest-growing website publisher in the UK by engagement time, with minutes spent on its platform growing 30% year on year in April.

Our latest analysis shows that four of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US increased the Tiktok followings on their main accounts by more than 11 million people each in the past two years.

The Daily Mail is the runaway Tiktok success here. It added 16.6 million to its main news account since August 2024, totalling 26.5 million followers, and that doesn’t even include its family of other pages.

The Daily Mail didn’t appear to be a leader in our analysis of young audiences to UK newsbrands last week, coming in just below average on percentage of its audience aged under 35 and with just 4% of time spent on its platforms (website/app/syndication partners) coming from that group.

But that data didn’t include social platforms and the Daily Mail is no doubt expecting that Tiktok reach to be a long-term gain for its brand as the next generation of news consumers come through.

Anecdotally, when we’ve had interns into the Press Gazette office in recent years, as well as from other young people who have had the pleasure of being quizzed by me on their news diets, the Daily Mail on Tiktok has repeatedly been mentioned.

READ FULL STORY

👨‍💼 And finally, Metropolis Group CEO Robert Marr is our sixth What I’ve Learned interviewee.

If you’re interested in how other leaders think, this is definitely one for you.

He speaks about going through three transformations in 15 years, the shift from unknown eyeballs to known audiences of decision makers, and why he once really should have invested in getting an interim CTO.

Personally, I didn’t know he was once a “finance bro” or that we’d be citing Margaret Thatcher so soon into this series!

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

The National Union of Journalists has said "media organisations should reflect on their coverage" of Jason Arday but condemned attacks on individual journalists who are being targeted since his death. (NUJ)

Youtube views will soon be measured as soon as a video starts to play, following a similar change that arrived for its Shorts last year. (IGN)

ABC has sued the Federal Communications Commission after the agency ordered eight ABC-owned stations to seek early licence renewals. ABC says the FCC is punishing it over its editorial decisions. (Adweek)

NBC News has struck an exclusive deal for its global programmatic advertising sales to go through Taboola's Realize performance ad platform. (Axios)

AI publishing platform Prism News has shut down its network of more than 200 AI-generated publications posing as US local newsrooms and hobby sites. They featured fake bylines and repurposed local reporting using AI. (Interlochen Public Radio)

Digital measurement company Comscore is pulling out of Spain. (Dircomfidencial)

CNN has said it stands "firmly behind" its journalist Kristen Holmes after the official White House Rapid Response account on X called her "a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment". (CNN on X)

👀In case you missed it:

1) IPSO reviewing ‘high volume’ of Jason Arday coverage complaints after Cambridge academic’s death

Complaints filed en masse in relation to Clause 1 (accuracy) of Editors’ Code.

2) Subscriber retention mastery: Tips for publishers from The Economist

The Economist has a 93% subscription retention rate on its B2B offering.

3) Two-thirds of audiences want climate change story as part of extreme weather reporting

Why journalists should not be worried about audiences finding climate change information boring.

4) Cloudflare says bot blocking is fuelling publisher AI deals

Chief strategy officer on scarcity leading to licensing deals, and move to “pay-per-use”.

5) Charity websites hit by rollout of Google AI answers

Extensive Google AI summaries of health-related searches take traffic from charities.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🗞️ IPSO, the press regulator to which most of the UK’s national newsbrands are signed up, has a big job on its hands.

It is reviewing a huge volume of complaints relating to the death of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday on Friday.

Many of those complaints are seemingly being filed under Clause 1 (accuracy) with references to specific articles published before his death. Those may be able to be assessed in line with usual IPSO procedures.

But IPSO is also being challenged to look at overall standards and the sheer number of articles being published about Arday in the weeks before his death. This is not, however, a breach of anything specific in the Editors’ Code of Practice followed by IPSO.

It is unlikely that critics will be satisfied with whatever IPSO chooses to do with those complaints. Just as we thought the debate about press standards would have calmed down following the Mail’s win in the Prince Harry and others privacy case, this has brought ill feeling to the fore once again.

READ FULL STORY

🔒 The latest expert joining our Masterclass series is The Economist’s EVP of marketing Nada Arnot speaking about how the newsbrand has made gains in subscriber retention.

There are useful takeaways around subscribers on free trials, communicating with subscribers after they have cancelled but before their contract runs out, and several new habit-building products launched in the past year.

With the UK’s rapidly approaching new rules on making subscriptions easier to cancel, getting this stuff right before that will be really important.

READ FULL STORY

🌡️ And finally, it’s common for newsrooms to worry that people find constant mentions of climate change boring.

But a new study shows most people do, in fact, want news organisations to explain the role of climate change in coverage of extreme weather like the recent heatwaves, wildfires and drought.

Former head of the BBC newsroom and BBC World Service controller Mary Hockaday has written a piece for us arguing that extreme weather is giving journalists clear opportunities to explain the climate story, as it becomes more apparent the public is keen to have that context.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

The Daily Mail has hired Mike Rothman in the newly-created role of general manager for the US to drive subscriptions growth and build partnerships with advertisers and agencies. (Press Gazette)

A Harvard professor broke the AI rules at the Financial Times by using AI to “condense” his opinion article. (Press Gazette)

There are 10 days left to apply to the new Queen of Camilla Future of Journalism Awards, the 25 winners of which will receive up to £2,500 to go towards training, equipment, accommodation or travel to boost their career development. (Journalists’ Charity)

US President Donald Trump lashed out at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes at an Oval Office news conference on Monday, repeatedly ordering her to "be quiet" and saying: "You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news”. (The Washington Post)

The Nation magazine is conducting an "internal review" of columnist Ross Barkan's work after New York magazine's own review found 67 columns of his "did not adhere" to editorial standards for proper attribution. (New York Post)

Google Search Console now allows publishers to see how their social and video posts perform in search but there are concerns this will mask the true impact of web traffic decline as a result of AI Overviews. (Search Engine Journal)

Politico has launched Canberra Playbook, its first expansion outside the US and Europe, which CEO Goli Sheikholeslami called "an extraordinary milestone for our newsroom and for the next chapter of Politico's growth". (Politico)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Cloudflare says bot blocking is fuelling publisher AI deals

Chief strategy officer on scarcity leading to licensing deals, and move to “pay-per-use”.

2) Charity websites hit by rollout of Google AI answers

Extensive Google AI summaries of health-related searches take traffic from charities.

3) Financial Times CEO Jon Slade to kick off Future of Media Technology Conference

The day-long conference in London on 10 September provides an essential briefing on revenue strategies.

4) Which UK national newsbrands reach the most under-35s?

New research based on Ipsos iris data reveals proportion of young amongst audience of major online newsbrands.

5) SFGate creates paywalled ad-free app as website traffic tumbles

San Francisco-based news site is first free Hearst newsbrand to add paid app.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

❌ Cloudflare is one of the big beasts of the internet world and is on a mission to crack some heads together in the AI scraping world.

I spoke to chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen about the thinking behind its pay-per-crawl and now pay-per-use plans and why its efforts to block AI bots are following through on helping publishers make licensing deals (with outcomes vouched for by People Inc CEO Neil Vogel).

At Press Gazette’s AI Summit in London in June, we heard concerns that blocking the bots doesn’t always functionally mean blocking the bots - as there are so many ways for them to get through without you explicitly letting them.

I put that to Stephanie and she was insistent that Cloudflare’s blocks are clever and effective, and if publishers are getting scraped they may have leaky buckets elsewhere (for example by syndicating content to other websites that allow the bots).

I’d be interested to hear if this rings true for our newsletter readers. Feel free to drop me a line with your response to this story on charlotte.tobitt@pressgazette.co.uk.

READ FULL STORY

👩‍⚕️Press Gazette has previously reported on how health coverage is the publisher topic most vulnerable to losing traffic as a result of Google AI Overviews and the rise of ‘zero-click’ searches.

We have now confirmed this is also directly impacting charities that look after people in their worst times. Several health charities told us website traffic had fallen as people got information from AI answers instead of their trusted, accurate pages.

The encouraging thing, however, is that people appear to still be seeking out other humans via forums and other engagement-led pages, and that donations continue to come through. Once people have worked out what they need, they arrive at charity websites with a clear purpose in mind so hopefully it really is just eliminating that first-level query.

READ FULL STORY

🗣️ Finally, it’s less than a month until our biggest annual gathering, the Future of Media Technology Conference, kicks off in London.

We’ve now announced a whole raft of speakers led by Financial Times CEO Jon Slade as keynote speaker.

The Times, The Guardian, The Economist, BBC Studios, the Daily Mail, Conde Nast, Politico UK and Hello! Magazine are among the newsbrands that will be represented on stage.

Find out more, including how to get tickets, here.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

The BBC has sought to subpoena members of Donald Trump's family for documents and testimony in the his $10bn defamation lawsuit over a Panorama episode. (BBC)

The Irish Mirror is the 19th Reach website to add a premium subscription. (Irish Mirror)

Apple is discussing multi-year pay-per-use deals with publishers for their content to deliver news and information via an improved version of its AI voice assistant Siri. (Wall Street Journal)

Events have become the biggest revenue stream at Time, expected to make up more than half of its total this year compared to 28% in 2023. (A Media Operator)

The Wall Street Journal said cryptocurrency platform Binance's lawsuit against it failed to show actual malice as required by US libel law. WSJ's lawyer said the "action springs not from false facts, but from Binance’s unhappiness with the way the Journal reported truthful facts". (Courthouse News)

GB News presenter Patrick Christys says he and his pregnant wife, fellow GB News host Emily Carver, had to leave their home due to a police warning about a death threat after he went to Calais to report on human trafficking gangs. (Daily Mail)

New York Magazine has severed ties with columnist Ross Barkan after an independent editorial review found 67 of his columns "did not adhere" to editorial standards for proper attribution. (The Wrap)

Paul Doyle has joined Reach as its first editorial director of audio and video to lead its everyday video journalism and develop new formats. Ex-head of video Anna Jeys is now director of audience.

👀In case you missed it:

1) Which UK national newsbrands reach the most under-35s?

New research based on Ipsos iris data reveals proportion of young amongst audience of major online newsbrands.

2) SFGate creates paywalled ad-free app as website traffic tumbles

San Francisco-based news site is first free Hearst newsbrand to add paid app.

3) Fake Forbes websites and the PR agency offering guaranteed coverage – at a price

Fake iterations of the Forbes website are packed with AI-generated and promotional content.

4) What I’ve learned: Express investigations editor Zak Garner-Purkis

Working for publications which can be ‘disrespected’ has given him ‘something to prove’.

5) Top 50 US news websites: The Times of India and The Hill lead growth in July

The Times of India and The Hill led month-on-month growth among the 50 biggest news websites in the US in July.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

The EU has just passed a law on this. Anthropic has begun watermarking its content as AI.

Should publishers start engaging with this issue?

Press Gazette has uncovered hundreds of examples of fake AI-generated content which has found its way onto reputable news websites via the PR industry.

Do you think better safeguards should be put in place?

Should publishers have policies in place to check for AI material and to inform readers when articles are AI-generated?

This survey will take a couple of minutes to fill out and everyone who does so will be sent a voucher giving you three months’ access to Press Gazette (provided you are not already a paying subscriber).

Everyone will also get sent the full survey results shared with them first.

Filling out this survey will also help inform Press Gazette’s reporting of this issue and, possibly, inform some exciting technology we are hoping to launch next month.

Thanks for your attention and please only fill out the survey if you work in the news/publishing industry.

FILL OUT OUR AI SURVEY NOW

🍿 We had some fun with this one in the office. Which UK national newspaper online has the highest proportion of young readers (i.e. aged under 35)?

Yes, the Press Gazette HQ can be a crazy place.

The answer will definitely surprise you. And for once I am going to make you click through to find the answer.

Everyone gets a couple of articles for free per month on Press Gazette. Unlimited access costs £9.99 per month (or £99 per year, which surely even the meanest manager would not baulk at signing off as an essential business expense).

Anyhoo, for those too busy to click through I will reveal the newspaper brand with the most young readers in the UK, rather than the highest proportion, The Guardian. And the one with least is the Daily Star.

There is no surprise that GB News has very few online readers under the age of 35.

Read the full story with data for 50 newsbrands below.

READ FULL STORY

🌵 Ad-free reading, interactive maps detailing the best taco restaurants and access to exclusive live events are among the benefits offered by SFGate with its new app.

This time last year, SFGate boasted the biggest audience of any local news site in the US with coverage focused around the state’s biggest tourist areas. At the time it was getting most of its referral traffic from Google Discover.

But since then Google has decided to trash worthy local content on its near ubiquitous smartphone aggregation app in favour of promoting links to its own stuff on Youtube, Twitter posts and AI-written summaries of the news.

We spoke to SFGate editor-in-chief Grant Marek about how the brand is fighting back against falling website traffic with its first paid-for app (price $4.99 per month). News on the ad-funded website remains free.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

Hearst reportedly made a “small round” of layoffs at Good Housekeeping in the US, though this “represented a substantial cut to its editorial team”. (Press Gazette)

Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane was fired last month after the company discovered that he had received a secret payment of around $6m from the founder of a research firm that works with the magazine. (The New York Times)

The Panorama documentary that led to Donald Trump's lawsuit against the BBC was streamed 285 times in the space of a year from IP addresses that could have been based in the US - of which 34 were in Florida, where the case is being heard. (Deadline)

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation have sued Donald Trump and his staff over a plan to charge for early access to his Truth Social posts. They said this would violate First Amendment rights to equal access to official information. (The Intercept)

Wired says it was beaten to reporting the OpenAI hacking story last week by three hours by an AI newsroom, Runtime Wire, that fed the livestream of the event where the details were given into an AI agent. (Wired)

A reporter for the Marion County Record in Kansas will receive an $850,000 settlement from the city over a police raid of her home and the newspaper's office in 2023. She already received $600,000 from the county. (Kansas Reflector)

The Arena Group, which owns Men's Journal, The Street and Parade, is changing its name to Paradium.ai as it is “moving decisively away from legacy publishing and emerging as a differentiated technology company built to empower independent creators”. (The Next Web)

Chair of the Labour Party Bridget Phillipson has accused Reform's Richard Tice of launching a “deeply chilling attempt to silence the free press” after he sent a legal threat to The Guardian over its reporting on his financial affairs. (The Guardian)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Fake Forbes websites and the PR agency offering guaranteed coverage – at a price

Fake iterations of the Forbes website are packed with AI-generated and promotional content.

2) What I’ve learned: Express investigations editor Zak Garner-Purkis

Working for publications which can be ‘disrespected’ has given him ‘something to prove’.

3) Top 50 US news websites: The Times of India and The Hill lead growth in July

The Times of India and The Hill led month-on-month growth among the 50 biggest news websites in the US in July.

4) New visa rules limit foreign journalists to 240-day stays in the US

Self-censorship fears raised over need for regulator visa renewals.

5) Boston Globe invests in local news, politics and sport to boost subscriptions

CEO Linda Henry tells Press Gazette how Globe is responding to AI summaries challenge.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🚨 When proud businesspeople started sharing on Linkedin laudatory articles about themselves that had appeared on obscure local editions of Forbes, something looked fishy.

Does Forbes really have Los Angeles and Liechtenstein editions? If so, standards have gone out of the window on these sites that are packed with AI-generated content and promotional articles not labelled as such.

Our latest Reality Wars investigation reveals that the sites are fake.

Other weird, similarly dubious-looking editions of brands like Vanity Fair, Fast Company and Variety have also been uncovered.

The sites look almost the same as the main editions of the relevant brands. But closer inspection reveals that the mix of topical and promotional content they are filled with appears to be all largely AI-generated.

Major PR outfit Baden Bower appears to be linked to the sites and to an organisation called the Global Recognition Awards.

Press Gazette’s investigation delves into the activities of a PR agency charging tens of thousands of dollars for paid editorial placements under some of the journalism world’s most famous mastheads.

READ FULL STORY

📽️ Our latest What I’ve Learned interview is with Zak Garner-Purkis – who is taking old-school foot-in-the-door-style investigative journalism into the video age for the Express.

Garner-Purkis has investigated everyone from Albanian drug gangs to Russian billionaires and had a video hit with his exposé of the grooming gangs that London mayor Sadiq Khan said did not exist.

Asked what gets him out of the bed in the morning, he said: “The excitement of being at the forefront of a moment of real change in the industry. Being a journalist-creator brings greater opportunities for a tabloid investigations editor than have ever existed before.”

READ FULL STORY

📉 The latest top 50 US news websites traffic ranking reveals Substack is the only top ten brand growing year on year (up 27%).

The year-on-year falls for some major brands are eye watering: with Newsweek down 77% year on year, Business Insider down 49% and Axios down 39%.

Dailymail.com is also falling down the ranking of top US website publishers, with 41 million visits per month in the US (down 47% year on year) putting it in 23rd position.

The US is on the frontline of AI disruption as the home market for Google and the major LLMs. It is also the major market where national regulators have shown the least interest in stepping in to help even up the playing field for news publishers - allowing Google and others to operate with a free hand.

As yet, Google is not offering US publishers the option to opt out of AI Overviews without harming their position in search.

READ FULL STORY

From our sponsor

Imagine having 11,000 reporters based in 180 countries

The stories that matter break locally first, in local publications, in local languages, days before they reach the wires. Journalist.net gives you access to both halves of that: the coverage and the people.

The monitoring tracks 150,000+ publications across 100+ languages in real time. Set it on the regions and topics you cover and you see stories forming in the regional press while everyone else is waiting on the wire. That alone is the edge.

The other half is who you call next. Eleven thousand verified, insured news professionals across 180 countries, searchable by location, language, beat, and format. A reporter in Jakarta who knows the ministry. A fixer in Tbilisi who has the number. A researcher who can read the court filing in the original. Every one of them manually verified against their published work and covered by professional insurance, so commissioning is a decision rather than a risk assessment.

You find them, you talk to them directly, and when the story is worth going after properly, you book them through the platform.

Local knowledge and local access, in one place, on deadline.

FIND OUT MORE

(Press Gazette earns money from purchases made via this link)

🤏 News In Brief

A coalition of almost 300 French newspapers has filed a complaint with the country's competition authority over Google's AI summaries, which launched there in July. (France24)

Perplexity has said it is blocking advertising created by Time that is aimed at AI agents, rather than human readers, and appears in the markdown version of its web pages. (Digiday)

The New York Post is launching an AI chatbot called Hamilton initially on its app. The new AI features also include personalised news briefing Post Express, a recommendation engine and an analysis discovery tool. (Axios)

Lawyers for Reform's Richard Tice have told The Guardian they will seek disclosure of documents that could reveal details about sources. Tice is suing the National Crime Agency, claiming information for The Guardian’s reporting could only have come from an NCA officer. (The Guardian)

South London Press owed staff (believed to be six people) almost £100,000 when it went out of business last year, according to liquidation documents. (The Greenwich Wire)

A US defamation case against the editor of Substack-based publication SpyTalk, Jeff Stein, has been dismissed after he was represented by the platform's Legal Defender programme whose lawyers described the lawsuit, brought by a former CIA executive, as a SLAPP designed to suppress reporting. (Committee to Protect Journalists)

Immediate, Bauer Media, Hearst UK and B2B specialist Shard Financial Media are the first publishers to offer placements through the new PPA Paid Work Experience Programme. (PPA)

Anthropic says it will add watermarks, which will remain even after copy-pasting, to text generated by its AI models to explain that the work was generated using AI. This will help the LLM comply with the new EU AI Act Transparency Code. (Techcrunch)

Media, production and publishing was the sector most hit by DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks on websites hosted by Cloudflare (14.2% of the total recorded) in the first half of this year. (Cloudflare)

👀In case you missed it:

1) New visa rules limit foreign journalists to 240-day stays in the US

Self-censorship fears raised over need for regulator visa renewals.

2) Boston Globe invests in local news, politics and sport to boost subscriptions

CEO Linda Henry tells Press Gazette how Globe is responding to AI summaries challenge.

3) Top 50 English-language news sites in the world: BBC hits one billion visits

The BBC reached one billion website visits globally for the first time in 18 months in July.

4) Non-website audience is focus of revenue growth for new Business Insider CEO

Christian Baesler shares his growth plans for Business Insider after being named permanent CEO.

5) BBC World Service moves from seven apps to one multilingual version

One app to service all BBC language users outside UK and US.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🗽 As the US celebrates 250 years of independence from the British crown this year it is imposing new visa restrictions on reporters from overseas.

From next month, foreign journalists will need to renew their visa applications every 240 days raising fears this will lead to self censorship.

There are also concerns that long delays on renewal applications could lead to reporters losing their right to work.

Luckily for the cause of American revolutionaries, there were no such I-visa restrictions in the years 1774 to 1776 when English journalist Thomas Paine was writing the pamphlets credited with turning public opinion against the colonial authorities.

READ FULL STORY

🗞️ The local newspaper in the birthplace of the US revolution – The Boston Globe – is a profitable journalism success story, after nearly going out of business following the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent collapse in local print newspaper revenues in the UK and US.

We spoke to CEO Linda Henry about how it plans to take digital subscriptions into the next phase of growth by investing in deeper editorial coverage of local news, sport, politics and business.

It has grown to 313,000 digital subscribers with a consistent promotion offering six months for $1 (currently rising to $27.72 per month after the trial ends).

With such a generous free offer the focus is on getting more readers in the front door to sample what the Globe has to offer and then investing in sufficient content to ensure they stick around.

READ FULL STORY

🌍 And there is good news for the BBC which cemented its position as the most popular English language news website in the world in July 2026 with one billion website visits, per Similarweb, up 11% year on year.

It was one of only 12 sites in our global top 50 ranking to grow traffic year on year. Substack grew visits by 40% to 175 million and The Guardian was up 2% to 305 million.

Business Insider was one of the biggest fallers – down 45% year on year and 12% month on month to 42 million visits. New CEO of the title Christian Baesley told Press Gazette this month how growth of its non-website audience on newsletters and platforms like Youtube and LinkedIn is now a big commercial focus for the brand.

Ninth placed Dailymail.com was flat year on year and up 8% month on month with 234 million visits in July – a great result for a popular newsbrand in the current market.

READ FULL STORY

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🤏 News In Brief

Walmart’s gaming outlet Restart has laid off its five-strong editorial team around 18 months after launch. (Press Gazette)

Prospect has cancelled the Media Confidential podcast hosted by its ex-editor Alan Rusbridger and ex-Financial Times editor Lionel Barber, who said the decision was made "in a bid to save pennies". (Lionel Barber)

A journalist at Dispatch has investigated the ecosystem that has led to writers in Kenya inundating commissioning editors in the UK and US with AI-written pitches about often fake stories. (Dispatch)

Ofcom is investigating a GB News programme in which a guest made comments about Pride in London that appeared to link it to paedophilia. More than 12,000 people filed complaints. (The Guardian)

Newsquest has appointed former New European editor Jasper Copping as editor of the Eastern Daily Press (where he was most recently head of news) and Nick Francis as editor of the Colchester Gazette.

A National Council for the Training of Journalists report about the use of AI in journalism in the UK has found a general approach of "cautious innovation" and a mixture of a good introduction into the newsroom and a "bumpy" one. (NCTJ)

USA Today unions have called on the company to end its partnership with technology company Palantir, saying that it threatens readers' online safety and trust in the company. (Poynter)

The US Society of Professional Journalists is revising its ethics guidelines for the first time since 2014, likely striking the line that journalism should “give voice to the voiceless". (Columbia Journalism Review)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Non-website audience is focus of revenue growth for new Business Insider CEO

Christian Baesler shares his growth plans for Business Insider after being named permanent CEO.

2) BBC World Service moves from seven apps to one multilingual version

One app to service all BBC language users outside UK and US.

3) What I’ve learned: NCTJ chief executive Joanne Forbes

Joanne shares her insights from a 30-year career in media.

4) How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! is making the most of platforms like Apple News and MSN while it builds paid memberships.

5) People Inc not blocking Google ‘at the moment’ as it rolls out digital subscriptions

People Inc (formerly IAC) reveals 2% revenue fall in second quarter.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🌐 Who would have thought that the website itself would start to a look a bit passé?

But Press Gazette’s monthly website readership league tables are starting to resemble the old print edition ABC figures we published for years (until nearly all UK national newspapers withdrew from publishing them publicly).

Axel Springer has responded to this challenge by bringing in a CEO for Business Insider with a background in social-first publishing aimed at the yoof at Complex (which produced Youtube show Hot Ones) and then Buzzfeed where he was COO.

Christian Baesler told Press Gazette how Business Insider is responding to website traffic halving in the space of two years by developing multimedia niches that include website content, newsletters and a video podcast anchored by a big-name correspondent. The first of these is CMO Insider led by Lara O’Reilly.

These will enable Business Insider to offer advertisers more sophisticated multi-platform deals and pave the way for a new premium website subscription tier.

READ THE FULL STORY

🌏 The BBC World Service is launching a new app that combines seven foreign language audiences in one place for the first time.

It features content from BBC News Arabic, Hindi, Mundo and Russian. It follows a move to bring all 45 language services onto one website platform.

Given the fact 90% of the World Service’s 355 million-strong weekly audience (wow! by the way) read it on mobile, the app move is a major development.

Centralisation of its key digital platforms will make them easier to maintain and develop.

READ THE FULL STORY

🗒️ So much has changed in journalism over the last 20 years - but thankfully the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) endures. It supports gold standard training in the basics of newswriting, media law and public affairs (how the world works) as well as honing new digital skills for more than 1,000 students every year.

Its continued success, and refusal to compromise on standards, is down in no small part to CEO of nearly 20 years Joanne Forbes.

If you get a name or a fact wrong on your journalism degree exam paper, you might lose a mark. Do that in your NCTJ newswriting exam and it’s a fail.

Joanne is the latest industry figure to answer Press Gazette’s questions for our ‘What I’ve Learned’ feature. Asked who, or what, inspires her, she name checked Kim Fletcher.

“He combines sharp insight with humility, generosity and wisdom, and has an exceptional ability to bring out the best in the people around him. Just as importantly, he’s great fun and a joy to work with. Quite simply, he’s one of the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”

Take a bow Kim - and thank you Joanne for helping to keep the talent flowing into newsrooms around the UK.

READ FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

Longtime Daily Mail columnist Andrew Pierce has said he left the paper to slow down and focus on his work at GB News. (Press Gazette)

The editorial teams at music publications Brooklyn Vegan, Alt Press, Revolver, and Goldmine have reportedly been “gutted” by their parent company Veeps, part of entertainment company Live Nation. (Press Gazette)

Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha has threatened to take legal action against ITV, claiming she was dropped for speaking out in support of Palestinian rights and therefore discriminated against. (BBC)

The BBC has said it is “extremely concerned” about new restrictions in Pakistan which ban international media from large parts of the country. (BBC)

A judge has granted Donald Trump's request to delay handing over financial records to the BBC while he amends his $10bn Panorama lawsuit to claim damages for "the reputational injury to the President, full stop" rather than to his businesses specifically. (BBC)

Times Higher Education reporter Jack Grove has revealed how he was warned by police not to contact professor Jason Arday again because three “polite” emails asking questions about plagiarism were “affecting his mental health”. (THE)

Andy Burnham is bringing forward by several months to January plans to make subscriptions easier to cancel. Trade groups including the News Media Association and PPA said this would leave businesses “scrambling to adapt to an entirely arbitrary new deadline - diverting valuable resources that would otherwise go into building better products”.

Reform-supporting businessman Arron Banks reportedly hired private investigators to look into The Sunday Times’ Gabriel Pogrund, editor of the Insight team that investigated funding to Nigel Farage. The publisher called the report “reprehensible”. (New Statesman)

The Express website breached accuracy rules with a claim an "urgent news alert" had been issued on BBC Breakfast about a letter from 40 Labour MPs to Keir Starmer opposing plans to limit jury trials. In fact the update came during a regular news segment. (IPSO)

Ex-police chief Norman Bettison successfully complained about a Mail story wrongly claiming he was responsible for alcohol-testing deceased victims of the Hillsborough disaster and other inaccuracies that “could have significant reputational implications”. (IPSO)

A couple behind the news blog EcommerceBytes are to receive an “unprecedented” $56m settlement from Ebay and former executives after a “campaign aimed at silencing their reporting” that saw them sent items such as a box of live cockroaches and a funeral wreath. (Financial Times)

An Uzbek businessman has been awarded £105,000 in damages and £117,663.38 in legal costs after winning a default defamation judgment against a UK ‘pink slime’ publishing network in relation to an article on the London Post website. (City AM)

👀In case you missed it:

1) How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! is making the most of platforms like Apple News and MSN while it builds paid memberships.

2) People Inc not blocking Google ‘at the moment’ as it rolls out digital subscriptions

People Inc (formerly IAC) reveals 2% revenue fall in second quarter.

3) RAJARs Q2 2026: GB News radio audience up 34% as BBC dips

Full round-up of UK radio listening figures for the second quarter of 2026.

4) Live blogging mastery: Tips for publishers from Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

The Guardian gets 15% of its total page views from live blogs.

5) What I’ve learned: Computer Weekly editor Bryan Glick who exposed Post Office IT scandal

Campaigning editor shares his insights and warns Google is ‘killing quality journalism’.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

👋 Hello! is proving there can be life after Google for consumer newsbrands.

In August last year it was one of many publishers that suffered after Google decided to make its Discover platform crapper by prioritising X posts and Youtube content over articles from professional publishers. Website traffic fell off a cliff overnight.

In our latest podcast, Hello! chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon explained how the celebrity news title has plugged the Google Discover revenue and audience hole by refocusing on syndication partners like MSN, Apple and Yahoo.

She gets down into the weeds of all this by explaining how a new data dashboard helped them figure out what content to do more of and what to ditch.

Advertising revenue share from these content syndication platforms is helping Hello! build a bridge to the sunlit uplands of reader revenue via its new VIP subscription offering. It is also making major progress on building a direct online audience with more than one million people now signed up to receive email newsletters and other registered reader benefits.

READ FULL STORY

📉 The biggest consumer publisher in the US, People Inc (formerly Dotdash Meredith), put a brave face on its latest financial figures.

But four years after Barry Diller’s IAC married its online publishing business Dotdash with magazine giant Meredith in a $2.7bn deal, revenue decline is not where they would have hoped to be.

Overall revenue for People Inc was down 2% year on year to $416.7m in the second quarter of 2026.

Google referrals now make up 21% of traffic to People Inc’s 19 leading brands, compared with around 66% a few years ago.

Actually blocking Google’s crawlers remains on the table for People Inc, CEO Neil Vogel said, because in the US (unlike the UK) there is still no way for publishers to opt out of Google AI Overviews without also leaving the search index.

As with news publishers elsewhere, People is pivoting fast toward social-first creator-style content, apps, events and paid online products.

The success of tabloid-style online newsbrand Daily Beast offers a bit of encouragement. Revenue there was said to be up 53% year on year to $20m in the second quarter.

Earlier this year, chief operating officer Keith Bonnici told Press Gazette’s New York conference how AI-powered product innovation and AI licensing revenue had directly helped the brand become profitable for the first time in its 17-year history.

READ FULL STORY

📻 The latest quarterly radio listening figures for the UK show GB News surging ahead as the fastest-growing talk station – up 34% in a year to 731,000 listeners per week.

News UK-owned Times Radio and Talk also saw healthy year on year growth.

Meanwhile, Radio 4’s Today held steady at 5.6 million listeners per week. It is down from its 2017 peak of 7.8 million (under the current RAJAR methodology). But it maintains a commanding lead as probably the single newsbrand with the biggest audience in the UK.

It makes the BBC decision to cut its roster of presenters from five to four following the impending departure of Amol Rajan seem like a strange thing to slice from the corporation’s £6bn annual budget.

READ FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

A court has now vacated a temporary injunction in Amazon's lawsuit against Perplexity, siding with Perplexity. It said the AI company did not use a tool to access Amazon's computers but its users were doing so with the help of Perplexity's AI agent. (Press Gazette)

The New York Times added net 280,000 digital-only subscribers in the past quarter, and 1.5 million in the past year, to a total of 12.8 million. Subscription revenue was up 11.7% compared to Q2 last year, while ad revenue was up 11.3%. (NYT Co)

News Corp posted “record revenue and profitability” in its financial year ending 30 June, with revenue up 7% to $9bn and EBITDA profitability up 15% to $1.6bn.

Dow Jones news subscriptions topped 6.7 million (including Wall Street Journal on 4.8 million) and The Times and Sunday Times grew 6% to 681,000. (News Corp)

Daily Mail, Global, Goalhanger, Guardian, Iconic, Newsquest, News UK, Observer, Reach and Telegraph have all backed a letter asking the Government to rule out "damaging" proposals to allow the BBC to run advertising on its audio content in the UK. (Advanced Television)

Cambridge academic Jason Arday, investigated by The Times over allegations of plagiarism, has resigned. TES reporter Jack Grove faced a police harassment complaint after he asked the professor questions last year. (BBC)

Donald Trump's legal team is attempting to block a court order that would force him to hand over his financial records to the BBC for its defence in his Panorama defamation case by the end of today. (Politico)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Live blogging mastery: Tips for publishers from Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

The Guardian gets 15% of its total page views from live blogs.

2) What I’ve learned: Computer Weekly editor Bryan Glick who exposed Post Office IT scandal

Campaigning editor shares his insights and warns Google is ‘killing quality journalism’.

3) The prisoner’s dilemma: Why UK publishers are signing Google AI deals

Is short-term revenue and traffic being prioritised over long-term health of news industry?

4) Creator-style content helps Time deliver seven-fold increase in Youtube views

Editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs says Time focus on social-first creator content is paying off.

5) Google adds Top Stories links to many news-related AI summaries

Entertainment is news category most likely to generate Top Stories carousel within AIO.

📻Latest podcast

How Hello! fought back after saying goodbye to Google Discover traffic

Hello! magazine was one of many publishers that saw website referrals from Google Discover plummet last year.

Chief content officer Sophie Vokes-Dudgeon talked Press Gazette UK editor Charlotte Tobitt through the “year of transformation” that has followed.

Hello! has fought back by making the most out of syndication channels while building its own community for the future.

Listen now

🧑‍💻 Live blogs, a bit like email newsletters, are one of those older bits of ‘new media’ that keep on giving.

The Guardian has pioneered this format since the late 2000s when it began live blogging everything from Big Brother to high-profile football and cricket matches.

Today, live blogs account for around 15% of the brand’s traffic (around 500 million page views so far this year!).

In our latest Masterclass feature we spoke to king of the political live bloggers - Guardian reporter Andrew Sparrow - about what makes a good live blog, how the technology that drives them has changed and why he thinks AI is not going to replace him.

Check out our other Masterclass features here, which include tips from the experts on utilising first-party data, making money from online video and producing a hit email newsletter.

READ FULL STORY

🤓 And in our latest ‘What I’ve Learned’ feature we spoke to journalism hero Bryan Glick – the editor who helped secure justice for the victims of the Post Office IT scandal by backing more than a decade of campaigning investigative journalism.

Computer Weekly is a title that adds to the sum total of human knowledge and keeps a vast and vital industry on its toes. So it’s sad to hear from Glick that Google, a business that claims it is committed to supporting the news industry, is the thing that currently presents the biggest threat to him doing his job.

He said: “Google is killing quality journalism and original reporting.”

And he added that it “behaves like a rogue security guard at the entrance to a shopping centre, deciding on a whim which stores visitors are allowed into”.

I love reading the bit in this feature where we ask people what motivates them. If you’re a journalist it certainly isn’t money. You need some other inner motor to keep fighting the good fight year after year.

Glick said: “Journalism is the best job in the world, isn’t it? For someone with a curious mind and a desire to understand how things work, it’s the dream job.”

READ FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

The Met Police spent four months investigating an allegation of harassment against a Times Higher Education (THE) journalist who emailed a Cambridge professor with questions about his academic record. (The Telegraph)

Business Insider interim CEO Christian Baesler is staying on permanently. He said there are "significant near-term opportunities" in the brand's social and newsletter reach while becoming "essential for a number of professional niches" via original reporting/events. (Business Insider)

Paramount CEO David Ellison has said CNN is at the root of opposition to the company’s merger with Warner Bros Discovery, with “speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions”. (The New York Times)

Channel 4 News has appointed The News Agents executive producer Louis Degenhardt in the newly-created role of head of platforms to make sure its journalism "is seen, heard, makes sense and makes an impact wherever audiences get their news". (Channel 4 News)

The National Council for the Training of Journalists is looking for someone connected with journalism to run the London Marathon next year after it secured a charity place. The chosen runner will have to raise at least £2,500 to support its training and development work. (NCTJ)

👀In case you missed it:

1) The prisoner’s dilemma: Why UK publishers are signing Google AI deals

Is short-term revenue and traffic being prioritised over long-term health of news industry?

2) Creator-style content helps Time deliver seven-fold increase in Youtube views

Editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs says Time focus on social-first creator content is paying off.

3) Google adds Top Stories links to many news-related AI summaries

Entertainment is news category most likely to generate Top Stories carousel within AIO.

4) What I’ve learned: Newsguard co-founder Steven Brill on the fight for truth

Brill shares insights from his near 50-year career in media.

5) Mail spent £35m fighting Harry’s ‘campaign for Leveson 2’ privacy claim

Claim was launched with ‘blaze of publicity’ and ‘monstrous all-out attack’ on Mail.

📻Latest podcast

Mike Soutar on what today’s media leaders can learn from Genghis Khan

Dominic Ponsford asks magazine industry titan Mike Soutar how to tackle modern publishing industry challenges looking at the lessons of history.

The Shortlist Media founder and former IPC Media director is something of a history buff. And he has just launched a new eight-part podcast series with Immediate Media’s History Extra called History’s Greatest Leaders.

How would Genghis Khan or Elizabeth I go about tackling an unequal struggle with tech titans, or deal with the decline of a magazine publishing empire?

Listen now

🤨 Beware of geeks bearing gifts, as Roman poet Virgil almost said.

The message being that presents from your enemy may contain a trap.

For several years now most major UK publishers have been receiving payments ranging from the hundreds of thousands to millions per year from Google in exchange for appearing on a confected platform called News Showcase.

These deals helped stave off the threat of Google being forced to compensate publishers for using their content (as has happened in Australia).

Now, instead of being offered money for nothing, the same publishers are being asked by Google to give access to all their content for AI training – and they are finding it difficult to say no.

Financial directors have got used to seeing that Google revenue line and if it disappears, cuts will have to be made elsewhere.

The mutation of Showcase deals into AI ones render a recent ruling from the Competition and Markets Authority, forcing Google to let publishers opt out of AI training without harming their position in search, moot.

In exchange for cash (and a little traffic) publishers are signing away the right to opt out of AI products whilst also agreeing not to sue Google or talk publicly about the deal (apart from perhaps via a jointly agreed press release).

The fear is that the long-term collective viability of the UK news business is being sacrificed for short-term individual expediency.

The deals last two years, by which time Google may have cemented its hold over the market for AI-generated answers and publishers’ collective bargaining position could be much weaker.

The era of traffic is over. The era of AI-generated answers has begun. There is no turning back, the user experience is just too damned convenient.

Publishers globally need to focus on striking a collective bargain that ensures fair payment for their crucial role feeding the AI beast, rather than piecemeal short-term deals designed to prop up yesterday’s business model.

READ FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

Rod Liddle, columnist for The Sun, The Sunday Times and The Spectator, and presenter on Times Radio, has died aged 66 after a short illness. (Press Gazette)

The editor of the Belfast News Letter has been made redundant after parent company Iconic Media decided to replace the role with a wider editorial leader for its titles across Northern Ireland. (Press Gazette)

BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Tony Livesey has left the broadcaster after an investigation from Panorama and The Times cast light over his previous career as editor-in-chief of Sport Newspapers. (Press Gazette)

Tennessee-based Chattanooga Times Free Press has laid off 50 staff including editors and reporters after the paper was sold to media executive Craig Fuller and his father Max Fuller for an undisclosed sum. (Press Gazette)

People Inc has reported its eleventh consecutive quarter of digital growth (up by 6%) driven by revenue not based on web sessions including licensing and performance marketing. Its subsidary The Daily Beast grew revenue by 53% in Q2. (People Incorporated Reports)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Creator-style content helps Time deliver seven-fold increase in Youtube views

Editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs says Time focus on social-first creator content is paying off.

2) Google adds Top Stories links to many news-related AI summaries

Entertainment is news category most likely to generate Top Stories carousel within AIO.

3) What I’ve learned: Newsguard co-founder Steven Brill on the fight for truth

Brill shares insights from his near 50-year career in media.

4) Mail spent £35m fighting Harry’s ‘campaign for Leveson 2’ privacy claim

Claim was launched with ‘blaze of publicity’ and ‘monstrous all-out attack’ on Mail.

5) Police and crime commissioner to pay Allison Pearson ‘substantial damages’

Telegraph columnist receives five-figure sum in complaint against Essex police boss.

📻Latest podcast

Mike Soutar on what today’s media leaders can learn from Genghis Khan

Dominic Ponsford asks magazine industry titan Mike Soutar how to tackle modern publishing industry challenges looking at the lessons of history.

The Shortlist Media founder and former IPC Media director is something of a history buff. And he has just launched a new eight-part podcast series with Immediate Media’s History Extra called History’s Greatest Leaders.

How would Genghis Khan or Elizabeth I go about tackling an unequal struggle with tech titans, or deal with the decline of a magazine publishing empire?

Listen now

🤳 Venerable US newsbrand Time is getting down with the kids in its bid to recover audience lost during these end days of Google referral traffic.

Charlotte Tobitt spoke to editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs to find out how its big push into the world of social media creators is paying off – both in terms of audience and revenue.

It is a world where publishers are dependent on fickle friends like Google and Meta and their video platforms. But for now, it is where the audience has gone so consumer brands have to follow if they want to remain relevant.

READ FULL STORY

🔎 In what appears to be a positive sign for publishers, Google has begun adding a “Top Stories” carousel to some news-related searches that throw up an AI-generated summary.

At first glance this should provide more clicks. The catch is that it appears publishers have to allow Google to have full AI access to pillage their websites in order to stand a chance of appearing in this new feature.

And it is bad news for publishers that Google is running AI summaries on news stories at all.

AI gets things wrong, so this is a good way to spread misinformation. And we know that for most people the AI summary, poor as it often is, is good enough to not bother clicking through to sources.

READ FULL STORY

🥇 Newsguard co-founder Steven Brill is now officially my favourite Press Gazette subscriber.

Interviewed for our latest “What I’ve Learned” feature he said (unprompted, I might add): “I’m sort of an afficionado of press trade publications, and yours is by far the best.

“In fact, it’s sort of stunning to me that you cover media in the United States better than any US publication.”

Thank you Steve!

He also shared valuable insights from his near 50-year-career in news media and banged the drum for Newsguard AI, which provides fact-checked AI answers about the news trained on 12,000 reputable sources.

READ FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

Daily Mail columnist and consulting editor Andrew Pierce has left the newspaper title after 17 years. (Press Gazette)

The Australian government has tweaked how its planned News Bargaining Incentive levy will apply to tech giants, increasing from 2.25% to 2.5% but only on their digital ad revenues in Australia - not their overall Australian revenue. (Press Gazette)

A judge has found it plausible that Perplexity conspired to bypass access controls and obtain Reddit’s material using third-party data scrapers, rejecting a motion to dismiss the case. (Press Gazette)

The Foresight News summer events diary includes the Edinburgh Fringe, Burnham’s ‘listening tour’ and the Clacton by-election. (Press Gazette)

Piers Morgan has revealed his recent Uncensored fundraising round valued the business at about $145m (£108m). (Financial Times)

The Trump administration served a grand jury subpoena on a freelance reporter for The New York Times in February in connection with reporting on a failed secret mission in North Korea. (NYT)

The Journalists' Charity has revealed the launch of the Queen Camilla Future of Journalism Awards which will grant up to £2,500 each to 25 winners every year aged 18 to 30 to boost their career development. (Journalists’ Charity)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Mail spent £35m fighting Harry’s ‘campaign for Leveson 2’ privacy claim

Claim was launched with ‘blaze of publicity’ and ‘monstrous all-out attack’ on Mail.

2) Police and crime commissioner to pay Allison Pearson ‘substantial damages’

Telegraph columnist receives five-figure sum in complaint against Essex police boss.

3) Why reporting of Ann Widdecombe killing pushed legal boundaries

Daily Mail first to name suspect in Widdecombe murder case before charge.

4) ‘Shot in the dark’ Daily Express Youtube show rises to top in under a year

Express video show follows repeatable formats with regular co-hosts and fewer “ding dongs”.

5) Scotland’s Daily Record targeted by fascist-style protesters at office

NUJ has seen “increasing amount of abuse and threats” towards journalists in Scotland in recent weeks.

📻Latest podcast

Mike Soutar on what today’s media leaders can learn from Genghis Khan

Dominic Ponsford asks magazine industry titan Mike Soutar how to tackle modern publishing industry challenges looking at the lessons of history.

The Shortlist Media founder and former IPC Media director is something of a history buff. And he has just launched a new eight-part podcast series with Immediate Media’s History Extra called History’s Greatest Leaders.

How would Genghis Khan or Elizabeth I go about tackling an unequal struggle with tech titans, or deal with the decline of a magazine publishing empire?

Listen now

⚖️ Prince Harry and his fellow privacy claimants against the publisher of the Daily Mail face being up to £18m out of pocket depending on the outcome of a costs hearing currently taking place at the High Court.

This is the shortfall between what their insurance premium covers and the total costs bill run up by Associated Newspapers.

After the claimants issued their bombshell press release four years ago Associated had no option but to fight this case to a conclusion. Harry and others alleged phone-hacking, phone-tapping, bribing police officers and commissioning burglary to order.

This was far worse than the allegations that shut down the News of the World.

As the case neared trial it became clear it was hopeless for the claimants when their main witness – Gavin Burrows – recanted his testimony.

Making such damaging claims on the basis of flimsy evidence from an unreliable source was incredibly irresponsible in the first place. Stubbornly pursuing it to the end of an 11-week trial was the claimants’ own decision.

Now they should pay the full price for doing so.

Why should Associated Newspapers’ ability to invest in journalism be impacted by a misguided legal action which, as the publisher said yesterday, was really a vehicle for Prince Harry and Hacked Off’s campaign for Leveson 2?

READ FULL STORY

🚓 Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has received an apology and substantial damages from Essex police and crime commissioner Roger Hirst over statements he made relating to her investigation over potentially inciting racial hatred with a post on X.

Police found she had no case to answer. And Hirst has now apologised for implying her guilt whilst a criminal investigation was ongoing.

It’s a timely reminder of the huge care which must be taken with reporting and commentary while criminal proceedings are ongoing.

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🚨 Any journalism student studying media law may have been perplexed by the reporting that followed the killing of politician Ann Widdecombe.

Here we explain why the Daily Mail risked an action for breach of privacy by publishing the name of the suspect before they had been charged.

And we discuss why reporting of a pre-trial appearance for Joshua Kerry went far beyond normal restrictions that apply.

Overall, the law around contempt of court has become a massive grey area. It has been so long since anyone was prosecuted that publishers feel emboldened to go beyond the letter of the law when it comes to potentially prejudicial reporting.

A review of the law is currently ongoing and greater clarity will be welcome.

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🤏 News In Brief

New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger said his title is "the largest player in our beleaguered industry" with 13 million subscribers and 2,400 journalists but "what we need is the entire industry to be much bigger" amid "crushing" AI changes. (Wired)

Gary Shipton, who has been editor-in-chief of Iconic Media's Sussex titles, is becoming an editor-at-large with the publisher with a focus on writing and supporting and representing the business across Sussex and the South of England. (Hold the Front Page)

One year in, former Washington Post video producer Dave Jorgenson's Local News International media company is reportedly profitable and has tripled its newsletter subscribers. (The Publish Press)

Independent publishers in Scotland are urging the Scottish Government to establish a dedicated Local News Fund, following the UK Government’s £12m Local News Fund launch that excludes Scottish outlets in its first year. (Journalism UK)

👀In case you missed it:

1) ‘Shot in the dark’ Daily Express Youtube show rises to top in under a year

Express video show follows repeatable formats with regular co-hosts and fewer “ding dongs”.

2) Scotland’s Daily Record targeted by fascist-style protesters at office

NUJ has seen “increasing amount of abuse and threats” towards journalists in Scotland in recent weeks.

3) What I’ve learned: Reach editor Natalie Fahy who fought against Reform ban

Nottingham Post editor and Reach London/East of England editor in chief shares her insights.

4) Nub News set to hit first profit after scaling down hyperlocal footprint

Nub News is due to reach £7.5k in profit after closing 17 locations in 18 months.

5) ‘First tremors’ of AI earthquake showing in digital revenue hit

Display ad revenue was biggest growth area among publishers surveyed by AOP.

📻Latest podcast

Mike Soutar on what today’s media leaders can learn from Genghis Khan

Dominic Ponsford asks magazine industry titan Mike Soutar how to tackle modern publishing industry challenges looking at the lessons of history.

The Shortlist Media founder and former IPC Media director is something of a history buff. And he has just launched a new eight-part podcast series with Immediate Media’s History Extra called History’s Greatest Leaders.

How would Genghis Khan or Elizabeth I go about tackling an unequal struggle with tech titans, or deal with the decline of a magazine publishing empire?

Listen now

📺 When the Daily Express decided to launch a show on Youtube it could only really have one name. Less than one year on the Daily Expresso now claims to be the most popular UK news podcast on Youtube - beating the likes of The Rest is Politics and The News Agents in terms of monthly video views.

The show, which goes out Monday to Friday, was made specifically for Youtube (it doesn’t really figure in podcast listening charts) and is an exemplar of how to build a mass audience on the Google-owned platform.

We spoke to Daily Express deputy editor-in-chief Sam Lister about how the team produced a hit Youtube show so quickly by adopting some proven strategies for success on the platform.

With Google referral traffic (from search and Discover) currently dropping like a stone for most publishers, Youtube remains a platform where they can build an audience quickly.

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😲 Black-shirted protesters pitched up outside the offices of the Daily Record in Scotland on Friday to protest against the paper’s coverage of... black-shirted protesters around Scotland.

The best thing you can say about these people is they are peaceful. But fascist-style demonstrations are a source of concern for journalists in Scotland who, according to the NUJ, are facing increasing levels of intimidation.

These extremists are operating against a wider atmosphere of distrust against the “mainstream media” fermented by the UK’s currently most popular political party (per most opinion polls) Reform UK.

Leading figures from Reform are currently lambasting the mainstream media for taking too much interest in Nigel Farage’s financial dealings and having too little concern for his security.

Having an agreed set of facts can provide an uncomfortable backdrop when they include the fact your party leader trousered £5m in cash from a crypto billionaire and accepted extensive benefits in kind from a convicted fraudster.

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👑 And finally, today we launch a new feature called “What I’ve Learned” in which we ask one of the heroes of our trade to share some insights gained from their career so far.

Our first interviewee is Nottingham Post editor Natalie Fahy, who successfully fought against a ban from Reform-led Nottinghamshire Council on engaging with her journalists.

Asked what keeps her going in tough times for journalism, she said: “The responsibility of trying to do good community journalism gets me out of bed every day. Where would people get trusted information on their neighbourhoods if it wasn’t for us? We have to make sure we are fit for the future so we can carry on informing people.”

Typical bloody mainstream media eh!

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🤏 News In Brief

People Inc is reportedly exploring a possible sale of The Daily Beast as it looks to focus on its core media brands and MGM. (Axios)

Former Golden Globes operator Hollywood Foreign Press Association has sued Variety parent Penske Media for at least $150m in damages, alleging the media company engaged in fraud to acquire the awards show in an attempt to create an entertainment industry monopoly. (Associated Press)

CBS News has added several new members to its 60 Minutes team following a mass exodus. New hires include NYT columnist Ross Douthat, war journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, journalist and filmmaker Gianna Toboni and recent CBS News hire Trevor Phillips. (The Wrap)

Sussex-based local news website and weekly newsletter Rye News has appealed for volunteers to fill key vacancies, including the role of editor, or risk being forced to close. (Rye News)

👀In case you missed it:

1) Nub News set to hit first profit after scaling down hyperlocal footprint

Nub News is due to reach £7.5k in profit after closing 17 locations in 18 months.

2) ‘First tremors’ of AI earthquake showing in digital revenue hit

Display ad revenue was biggest growth area among publishers surveyed by AOP.

3) 50 biggest news websites in UK: ITV and Irish Mirror lead engagement growth in June

ITV led growth in engagement among the top 50 newsbrands in the UK in June, with minutes spent with it online more than doubling month on month.

4) Journalist response platform plays ‘whack-a-mole’ against AI deluge of PR content

Three more widely-published experts touted by PR industry appear not to exist

5) New research reveals AI answers only as trusted as the newsbrands they cite

Survey reveals crucial part publishers play in providing plausible AI responses.

📻Latest podcast

Mike Soutar on what today’s media leaders can learn from Genghis Khan

Dominic Ponsford asks magazine industry titan Mike Soutar how to tackle modern publishing industry challenges looking at the lessons of history.

The Shortlist Media founder and former IPC Media director is something of a history buff. And he has just launched a new eight-part podcast series with Immediate Media’s History Extra called History’s Greatest Leaders.

How would Genghis Khan or Elizabeth I go about tackling an unequal struggle with tech titans, or deal with the decline of a magazine publishing empire?

Listen now